Complete 2011-2012 Lightning Player Usage Charts

For many, including myself, the 2011-2012 Player Usage Charts [PDF][2] released by Robert Vollman (and friends) have proven invaluable, as the foreword suggests, for putting "last yearâ€™s player production into context". Based on zone start[3] and quality of competition[4] data, these charts help us to see how a team's players were utilized by their coach in relation to each other.

The following graphic helps interpret the significance of a player's bubble (the size of which reflects his Relative Corsi[5], blue being a positive value and white a negative value) on a team's chart:

Regardless of the extremely small sample sizes, it seemed worthwhile to generate usage charts that included them, even if only for the sake of a little extra discussion:

Despite registering just a single assist, Brown's play earned rave reviews for brief end-of-the-year stint. The buzz he created seems particularly justified when you consider that, when he did hit the ice, he ate up some very tough even-strength minutes. He did register a very high (unsustainable) on-ice save percentage[11] (.971) so perhaps he got a bit lucky as his PDO[12] (1059), similar to BABIP for baseball, would indicate.

Angelidis, we can see, was somewhat sheltered in his extremely limited action in that he faced relatively easy competition. He, too, took advantage.